


Here and Now

by chronologicalimplosion



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, Femslash February, Gen, Mentions of homophobia, Pre-Canon, gay wedding, tarot reading
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 04:06:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29272203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chronologicalimplosion/pseuds/chronologicalimplosion
Summary: In a small town, the relationships between neighbors can often stretch over multiple life stages, morphing with the times. This is a glimpse into the relationship that Ronnie and Twyla had, when Twyla was on the cusp of becoming an adult and Ronnie was on the cusp of getting married.
Relationships: Ronnie Lee & Twyla Sands, Ronnie Lee/Original Female Character
Comments: 6
Kudos: 9





	Here and Now

**Author's Note:**

> I stumbled across the list of Schitt's Creek rarepairs that budd put together for Femslash February, and Ronnie/Twyla were in theory the pairing for Feb 2, when I started writing this, but it ended up longer than I anticipated. This isn't a May/December romance, since SCFF said f/f gen was fine. It's about growing up and found family and queerness and time. And being okay with impermanence. I did pick tarot cards for this spread, but I know so little about tarot (which I'm deciding to lean into since Twyla is obviously not the most well-versed either), so I'm not going to tell you what the actual spread was. See if you can guess. :P
> 
> There was originally going to be a more modern-day coda but this is long enough as is and I trust you all to decide what the reading actually ends up meaning for Ronnie's life and marriage. I'm hoping to write more ficlets for this challenge, so I had to wrap this up lmao.

Growing up in a small town means that it's often hard to pinpoint just when you met someone for the first time. Ronnie wasn't invited to Twyla's single mom's baby shower, and she'd never stepped inside any of the three apartments Twyla spent her youth in (which showed in the leaky weatherproofing and ancient, smoke-saturated carpets). She'd asked Ronnie herself, once, as a part of a class project assigned by Mrs. Schitt, and the older woman peered down the bridge of her nose at young, pigtailed Twyla for several long minutes before finally declaring that she couldn't remember. She'd heard and seen Twyla around the Café where her mother worked long before she learned Twyla's name.

The two could both remember, though, how they'd come to know each other.

* * *

Twyla was fourteen when she first started working at the café after school. It was for spending money, sure, but it was also so her mom could take the night off sometimes. It was because she'd spent most afternoons since she was nine or ten stationed at a table in the corner of the café anyways, working on homework until she ran out, and then reading until she ran out, and eventually reading palms or tarot cards for bored patrons with a shortage of anything to hurry off to and an excess of pocket change. It was a good way to socialize, to practice reading people. Twyla had never been very good at that. She made up for it, in the readings, by telling interesting stories.

She found that she liked the work a lot, and not just because she had a hard time sitting still. It was easier to learn about people when they made her a part of their daily habits. She could learn Bob and Gwen's schedules, and Maureen's usual order. Slowly, she was even getting better at predicting Roland's cravings, although she wasn't sure she'd ever get confident enough not to ask first.

Ronnie liked her coffee with just a drop of creamer in it, no sugar, and she always ordered hash browns in the morning and a sandwich for lunch, unless she showed up in her work clothes, covered in drywall dust. On those days, she'd sit down in one of the booths instead of getting her food to go or perching, barely-settled, at the bar. She'd order biscuits and gravy, or a bowl of soup, or chili cheese fries, or mozzarella sticks. Something hot and messy and filling and absolutely unportable. And Twyla would watch the tension in her shoulders release, as she sat at the booth and spent, at minimum, thirty minutes sitting still and eating.

Sometimes on those long, booth-lunch days, a kind-faced woman named Billie would sit down across from Ronnie. She wasn't a regular customer, but Twyla eventually learned that she drank green tea and would generally order tater tots or some kind of baked good to go with it. She draped herself in the same sort of gossamer scarves on the hottest days of summer and the coldest days of winter, although the brown coats she wore did change with the season. She would sit and talk to Ronnie, chattering away about her pastoral-sounding life and her errands to Elmdale and the escapades of their various mutual friends. Billie's tea went cold most days, only a few sips taken, but she'd steal Ronnie's fries and Ronnie would take sips of her tea in retaliation and the pair would end up holding hands over the tabletop once they'd cleared the food out.

Since observing people, taking orders, and busing tables was how Twyla learned about _most_ people in the town, it had always confused her when people said Ronnie was hard to read. She knew far more about Ronnie than Billie, for instance. Most of what she knew about Billie was that Ronnie relaxed faster on days when she was there.

* * *

Ronnie was eating lunch alone at the café, almost done with a lunch of baked potato soup, the day that Twyla's mom's current boyfriend's sister's ex-fiancé came to the café, plastered at 1:13 on a mid-July Tuesday, stumbling around with three fingers in a bowling ball. He was looking for Twyla's mom's boyfriend's sister, and without any closer relation present, Twyla was left fielding his questions. She hadn't yet been working at the café for a full year, so she wasn't particularly equipped to convince him to leave or upsell him on some kind of hamburger that would require him to, at least, take his hand out of the bowling ball to eat it, but she had been dealing with her mother's dates' families for most of her life.

So she didn't have a great excuse for why she tried to take the bowling ball from him bodily, even though he was easily twice her size. She did almost succeed, though. She managed to get a good enough grip on the smooth, round object to pull it off two and a half of the man's fingers, but somehow he gripped onto it with that remaining fingertip just enough to stop the ball from retreating with Twyla's hands, instead falling four whole feet onto the ground. The ancient, plywood floor of the café. Also, one of the drunk man's toes, but that would heal.

It took almost twenty minutes for the owner of the café to get to the building, Twyla and her mom sitting morosely near the hole in the floor, once the drunken perpetrator had been sent off on his way to get medical attention. Ronnie stayed in the booth the whole time, her food gone, no source of entertainment, obviously mid-project on whatever job she was supposed to be working. She just sat and watched Twyla's mom flip between hysterics at the incident and Twyla's place in it, panicked relief that her daughter was okay, and a sort of insensible terror at the potential consequences.

The owner got exactly two sentences into his reprimand of Twyla, placing blame squarely on her (and her mother's bad parenting) before Ronnie stood up and held out a hand. "Leave the kid alone, Frank. It was some other jackass's fault. If you leave your two best servers alone to do their jobs, I'll fix the floor at cost."

That had essentially stopped Frank's argument in its tracks. He couldn't afford Ronnie's normal rates with the café margins, and even Twyla knew that. Ronnie handed her card to Twyla, informing everyone that the young server was the only point person she'd be taking calls from about the café floor, keeping her eyes on Twyla the whole time. She seemed pleased with what she found there, and requested that Twyla get her a BLT to go from the kitchen.

Twyla was thrilled to have work to do that got her away from the hole in the floor and Frank's too-intense, vein-throbbing gaze. She told the line cook to put double bacon on the sandwich.

* * *

After the repairs, which ended up being essentially an entire renovation of the café floors, Ronnie learned that Twyla was a pretty good storyteller and chatterbox herself. Twyla started to find herself with a boothmate when she was sitting around at the café doing homework on school nights. Unlike a lot of other people who sat with Twyla at the café, she wasn't looking for readings of her future or access to the crispy bits that got fished out of the deep fryer in-between rushes. She wasn't looking for anything from Twyla, it would seem, aside from company. She did seem to enjoy it when Twyla would tell her stories about the various adults that came into and out of her life through complicated relationships with her mom.

This was also how Twyla got to know Billie, starting to swap stories of small-town life with the older woman when she came to visit Ronnie over lunches. She learned that Billie raised goats and gardened religiously, growing enough produce for her substantial network of friends. She was a mostly-retired schoolteacher who was still the first on the call list when anyone in the county needed a substitute.

Twyla also learned just how many of Billie's stories involved Ronnie when she was telling them for an outside audience, showing a slightly different version of the overworked contractor that came into the café for her creature comforts. Through Billie's eyes, Ronnie was a talented but rarely-realized home cook, a highly-motivating coach, an excellent event planner, and an impassioned crooner--but all only when she thought fit. Ronnie never did any sort of work, it would seem, for someone she thought was undeserving of it. Twyla, who started working at 14 partly because she couldn't stand to sit still while others around her were busy, appreciated that about her.

It also only made her more grateful that Ronnie had given her time up on Twyla's behalf without even letting Frank tear into her first.

* * *

Twyla was sixteen when same-sex marriage was first legalized in Ontario. She didn't see either Ronnie or Billie at the café the day it happened, the June after her first year of high school, but she thought of them nonetheless when she heard the news. She held it on the tip of her tongue all day, wanting to know if they'd heard, wanting to make sure they didn't go even a minute longer without knowing than they had to. But the store closed at the end of the day, and then a full two more days passed, without any sign of either woman while Twyla was around.

When Ronnie came in three days after the news in an unusually crisp button-down, and ordered two chili cheese dogs with a milkshake, Twyla brought her food and then sat down in the booth across from her, in Billie's normal seat.

"Is something wrong?" Twyla asked, and when Ronnie started to eat her chili cheese dog instead of answering, Twyla waited patiently.

Eventually, after eating the first chili cheese dog and washing it down with some of the milkshake, Ronnie looked at Twyla. "You read cards, right?"

"Oh, yes! I was always surprised you never asked when you came to sit with me; most people do."

"Well, I don't normally give a shit what anybody else thinks about my life, but right now I think I could use a little... guidance." Ronnie scowled a bit on the last word, like it tasted bad even saying it. She picked up her second hot dog and took a bite out of it, which seemed to soothe her somewhat.

"Oh, well, I'll get the cards then!"

Twyla left and grabbed her inherited set of cards, battered and beer-stained as they were, and when she came back to the table, Ronnie had finished her food and was sipping on the milkshake. Filled with an inexplicable excitement and not caring too much about the possibility of soiling the cards, Twyla pushed the dishes to the side of the booth as she sat back across from Ronnie. "Is there a question you're wondering about?"

Ronnie, unhurried as ever, finished taking a long sip from her milkshake and tasting the lingering chocolate before she answered. "Billie and I are trying to get married this weekend, because of the court case. We've been talking about it for a while, but now the day is upon is, and it's hard to say if it'll go any higher in the courts, so she's worried it's a little now or never."

Twyla nodded and thought for a moment before she started to shuffle the cards. "I think I'll pull a past, present, and future. Just seems like the right thing."

One side of Ronnie's mouth curled into a grimace. "I don't need you to tell me about my past, Twyla, I was there!"

It was the harshest tone Ronnie had ever taken directly with Twyla, but she waved it off with a kind smile, focused on her shuffling and trying to think thoughts about all the times she'd sat and observed Ronnie and Billie's little public lunches. "It's just a part of the reading, Ronnie. You're supposed to think about your past and sift through it for the important bits. It's meditative. Here," Twyla said, placing the cards in Ronnie's hands, "Shuffle while you think."

Ronnie obliged, only a little reluctantly. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath while she shuffled. Her face was calm, but Twyla recognized the tension in her shoulders. Apparently two chili dogs and a milkshake weren't enough for whatever knot had worked its way into Ronnie's mind.

Eventually, Ronnie passed the shuffled deck back to Twyla, who flipped three cards over onto the slightly-sticky tabletop. Twyla nodded along as she set down the first two, smiling ever-so-slightly even as she chewed contemplatively on her lip.

Then she set down the third card and sucked in air through her teeth. There was a rather ominous-looking black stain that, facing this way, always made the colorful wheel look more like a skull to Twyla. "I see one of you dying an early death," Twyla said, unceremoniously, with her eyebrows knitted together. She only looked up at Ronnie after she'd already said it, chewing her lip even more.

"What happened to starting with my past?" Ronnie asked, one eyebrow raised. She didn't seem _surprised_ or _upset_. Maybe a little... resigned?

"Sorry, we can do your past," Twyla responded, nodding down at the cards. "Just thought you might want to know."

"That is the sort of thing people don't normally get a heads up about."

Twyla looked over the cards again, unable to stop herself from touching them in a thousand tiny adjustments, never quite straight. "You have a very strong sense of community," Twyla finally started, tapping the card emblazoned with many golden goblets and a figure in red fineries. "You've been fairly successful, business-wise, and made more of a community for yourself than you ever thought you'd have. You've been very kind and self-sacrificing. But that hasn't been enough to bring happiness with it."

Twyla snuck another glance at Ronnie, who made no move to open her mouth or correct her. She looked like she was listening, still not surprised, and Twyla assumed she was privately, quietly thinking of her past.

"You should look at your past and try to see the places where you could have made different decisions that would have made you more happy. Even if they're unconventional."

That got a single chuckle out of Ronnie, which energized Twyla somewhat. She tapped the next card thoughtfully, a figure in flames with one large coin balanced in either hand. "You feel rushed, right now, into getting married. The fact that you're worried about the chance disappearing is understandable, but it's not going to go anywhere. If you're meant to marry Billie, then you'll still want to marry her in another month or two. There's something you don't know yet, about her, that may change your decision if you wait."

Twyla glanced up at Ronnie's face again and found it completely unreadable. Ronnie was looking at her intensely, eyes slightly narrowed. Twyla nervously tapped the last card of the three, almost blushing under the intensity of Ronnie's gaze.

"There's happiness in your cards for a little while, but everything has an ending. I see a death--early, surprising, and out of everyone's control. But," Twyla added, nodding as if to convince herself of what she was thinking, "the hurt will pass. You have a hopeful future, and there is a high point still to come before the wheel starts rolling downhill."

Ronnie laughed again, a single time, and Twyla smiled hopefully. "So?" she asked, "What are you thinking?"

Ronnie shook her head, half-smiling. "I'm thinking that if I don't get married now then I'm going to regret it forever. If it ends, then it ends. I'd rather have Billie be able to come and see me on my untimely death bed than my _brother_." Ronnie rolled her eyes, but Twyla was pretty sure she saw a glint of fondness on Ronnie's lips rather than a true scowl, which she tried to hide with her straw. "You working this weekend?"

"Only in the mornings," Twyla replied sunnily.

"Billie's nephew was going to be our flower boy, but then her sister found out _why_ she wanted him to come visit and put the kibosh on it."

"Oh no, Ronnie!" Twyla reached across the spread on the table to comfort Ronnie, but she was waved off. "That's terrible, I'm so sorry!"

"It's fine, that's why we didn't invite _them_. We'll see Jeff some other time. We just need someone to sprinkle some flowers this weekend. And it sounds like you're free."

Twyla smiled softly, her eyes misting a little. She managed to put one of her small hands over Ronnie's with only minimal protest. "I'd love to."

* * *

It was a slapdash affair, with Roland Schitt acting as officiant and everyone wearing clothes out of their closets--Ronnie was wearing a pair of green overalls that were a little paint-splattered, but with a blazer over them, and Billie was in a light-colored grey-and-blue dress, but it was obviously part of her normal wardrobe. Twyla gave Ronnie the nine of cups from her reading--the most hopeful card, the one telling Ronnie to go ahead and go off-script to make herself happy--to tuck into the inner pocket of her jacket.

Twyla tucked away the mental image of Ronnie's laughter, nearly crying, at Roland's jokes at the alter, while Billie fondly rolled her eyes.


End file.
